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I am currently a 3L and I have been working at a large, busy prosecutor's office in a felony unit. I have had three or four felony trials under my belt and have written over fifty responses to various motions. However, I am looking to get out of criminal law (prosecution) and go defense or plaintiffs/insurance defense. What's more is that my current officer offers most of its interns positions for full-time prosecutor employment, but that is all contingent on the budget. At this point in time, the county has not made any decisions on offers for its interns. Accordingly, insofar as I want to look out for myself first and foremost, what can I do to step into a better position with a higher salary?

Anonymous User wrote:I am currently a 3L and I have been working at a large, busy prosecutor's office in a felony unit. I have had three or four felony trials under my belt and have written over fifty responses to various motions. However, I am looking to get out of criminal law (prosecution) and go defense or plaintiffs/insurance defense. What's more is that my current officer offers most of its interns positions for full-time prosecutor employment, but that is all contingent on the budget. At this point in time, the county has not made any decisions on offers for its interns. Accordingly, insofar as I want to look out for myself first and foremost, what can I do to step into a better position with a higher salary?

Thanks!

I think ID firms and personal injury firms will definitely be interested you, since they really need people with your experience (unlike a lot of areas of law, they actually go to trial on a number of their cases). Just apply to firms if those are the areas you're interested in, and be ready to explain why you're interested in ID or plantiffs personal injury work. With that said, recognize that it'll probably essentially be a paycut if you have significant student loans, assuming you're comparing repaying on a 10 year standard repayment plan versus 10 years of PAYE/IBR with PSLF on year 10 at the prosecutor's office. Pay at lower end ID firms/plaintiffs firms tends to be kind of terrible as an associate, and even the higher end ID firms (e.g. Wilson Elser) pay pretty poorly since their hourly rates suck and insurance companies are chizlers about nickeling and diming bills to reduce attorneys fees (I feel like ID is one of the only areas where you'll see that kind of crap). Also, the hours will be a long longer at the firms (especially in ID), and a lot of people find ID work to be soul sucking. But if you are genuinely more interested in plaintiffs/ID work, and aren't just looking for a better salary, it could be a fit. Might as well just apply and see what happens. I think you're probably a pretty good candidate for those jobs. Only people who would probably beat you out are people who interned/"clerked" for the firms during law school (there's not very many top law school grads who are fighting for lower end PI/ID firms nowadays, and, frankly, those grads were never really great candidates anyways since these firms, like most firms, prefer people who are genuinely interested in what they do, rather than someone who simply couldn't get biglaw).